Hockey Update: Tenaga’s coach Nur Saiful Zaini believes in strength of local talent
Overall defending champion Tenaga Nasional believes in local talent to win the title in Premier Division challenge in Malaysian Hockey League which will come off on December 17.
Tenaga’s coach Nur Saiful Zaini believes in strength of local talents, he said that they had never hired the foreign players for achieving this title
“because we take care of their welfare”.
“We provide them with jobs and also give them promotions to continue playing for Tenaga. The players also get to take study leave and are paid allowances when they call up for training with the national team,” he said.
Saiful Zaini is quite confident to win at least one title in this season.
“We have faith and trust in our local players to put up a strong challenge against teams with foreign players,” said the former international.
On the contrary, University Kuala Lumpur who finished sixth and last in last Premier Division are relying on foreign talent for meeting the challenge as they have hired New Zealand’s national assistant coach Darren Smith and four foreign players – two Kiwis
and two Germans. They were overwhelmed last year to Maybank. MHF have not applied any restrictions on the hiring of foreign players for any team. Nur Insafi last year hired fifteen foreigners but they were knocked out in the quarter -final phase.
Tenaga finished runners-up in last year Premier Division to Kuala Lumpur Hockey Club and for the overall title Tenaga Beat Sapura 4-2 on penalties in the final.
Numbers of national players are included in Tenaga for this season, as country’s top goalkeeper S.Kumar gave out a dazzling performance in Asian Games 2010 at Guangzhou.
Three national players Mohd Madzli Ikmar, Mohd Amin Rahim and Baljit Singh Charun would provide a best defence to Tenaga. In the same way penalty corner specialist Amin has done a brilliant job by scoring five goals in the Asiad.
Having leadership qualities, Faizal Saari will lead the team while Tenaga also have two players from national training squad –Tajol Rasoli and Mohd Fikri Bassar.
With the team of such talented local players, Saiful does not feel a need to hire foreign talents for winning the overall title.
Tags: